Role of Organisms
In the early 1930s Cornelis Van Niel discovered that sulfide-dependent chemoautotrophic bacteria (purple sulfur bacteria) fix carbon and synthesize water as a byproduct of a photosynthetic pathway using hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide :
Few organisms utilize this method of photosynthesis today, making their water contribution negligible. But on the hydrogen sulfide-rich and oxygen-poor early planet, a small but significant portion of the earth's water may have been synthesized biochemically through this pathway.
Read more about this topic: Origin Of Water On Earth
Famous quotes containing the words role of, role and/or organisms:
“Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.”
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“Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.”
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—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)